1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a kiosk that is field installed and is capable of allowing a person to interact with a program, such as the Medicaid program, or communicate directly with a counselor for the program, so that the person may enroll, change health plans, review benefits, etc., within the program from a remote location.
2. Background of the Prior Art
Currently, when a person is determined to be eligible for Medicaid, that person must complete appropriate enrollment paperwork in order to begin receiving benefits. This requires that the beneficiary make either telephonic contact or face-to-face communicate with an enrollment counselor, wherein the counselor gathers various items of information from the beneficiary, presents various options, such as various managed care organizations for which the beneficiary is eligible, to select from to the beneficiary, and the counselor completes the necessary actions to complete the enrollment process for the beneficiary. If the beneficiary decides to change his or her health care plan, either before the lock-in period or during an open enrollment period, appropriate action is completed by the counselor to enroll the beneficiary.
Typically, the enrollment broker is paid a flat rate per completed enrollment.
This method of enrolling and managing beneficiaries suffers from numerous inefficiencies. As each beneficiary must have a one on one session with a counselor, relatively high staffing levels must be maintained by the entity providing the counselors, whether the entity be a government organization or a third party vendor. Having an appropriate staffing level is extremely expensive, especially in light of the amount of training each counselor must receive and the additional training each counselor receives as updates to the programs are made. As counselors are paid on a flat rate basis, there exists a tendency for counselors to rush through each application in order to maximize cash flow, this being especially true when the counselors are employed by a third party for profit provider. Rushing a beneficiary through the enrollment process tends to leave beneficiaries making less than fully informed choices regarding his or her care plan. Additionally, as the counselors are only human, mistakes tend to happen during application completion. Such mistakes occur for a variety of reasons including simple entry mistakes, such as transposing a number entered, miscommunication between counselor and beneficiary—this is especially problematic when the beneficiary speaks little or no English. Such mistakes delay the already slow process of enrollment of the beneficiary, increase the overall costs to the program, and increase the frustration level for the beneficiary.
Use of computers by the counselors for some or all aspects of the application completion process may relieve some of the above noted problems, yet fails to reduce some of the major drawbacks associated with the enrollment process.
What is needed is an integrated system that relies on technological advances that addresses the above noted shortcomings found in the present method. Specifically such a system must reduce the need for the high cost of maintaining high counselor staffing levels. Such a system must help reduce the mistakes made in applications while increasing the speed with which applications are processed. Such a system must eliminate the tendency to rush a beneficiary through the enrollment process, in order to allow the beneficiary to make informed decisions during the enrollment process.